In order to investigate students’ misunderstandings of potential wells and tunneling, a conceptual knowledge test was administered to Dutch secondary school students after they were taught about quantum mechanics. A frequency analysis of responses to the multiple choice questions ($n=98$) and coding of the responses to the open-ended questions and explanations ($n=13$) shows that Dutch secondary school students experience difficulties similar to those reported for undergraduate students. The students’ underlying difficulties were analyzed using a typology of learning impediments. Results of this analysis show that students have difficulty connecting knowledge of potential wells and tunneling to their prior knowledge. Students mainly have creative and epistemological learning impediments, which cause eight incorrect synthetic models.

中文翻译：

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中学生对潜在油井和隧道的误解

为了调查学生对潜在井和隧道技术的误解，在对中学生讲授量子力学后，对他们进行了概念性知识测试。对多项选择题的回答的频率分析（$ñ=98$）以及对开放式问题和解释的回答的编码（$ñ=13$）表明，荷兰的中学生遇到的困难与本科生所报告的困难相似。使用学习障碍的类型对学生的潜在困难进行了分析。分析结果表明，学生很难将潜在的油井知识连接到他们先前的知识。学生主要有创造性和认识论的学习障碍，这会导致八个错误的综合模型。